What we need is a tool that creates living components. Just let me create components and let them have multiple states based on click-, hover- and scoll-events. Then, let me build a view consisting of those components.

While I’m still committed to the Apple ecosystem, the hardware updates and price points have left me luke-warm. I’m considering switching to a Dell XPS laptop but sticking with OSX via VMWare. Has anyone had any experience with a similar setup?

Hey Hillel, Matt from UsabilityHub here :) Thanks so much for the shoutout. Is it cool to reach out to you via email? I’d love to know how you’ve been finding our product and if there’s anything we could be doing better.

Would it be possible to see some evidence to back up the assertions in this article? I ask because there is some compelling evidence that first impressions, and in particular aesthetic judgement, have a measurable impact on perceived usability. Simply put, people tend to believe that aesthetically pleasing things work better, and when people believe things work better, their actual experience is measurably better.

Here are some relevant links that discuss the above in greater detail:

By no means is aesthetic evaluation the be all and end all of usability testing, but it might not be particularly beneficial to dissuade people from it entirely. For what it’s worth the activities you suggest doing; observe what users do, take note of where they trip up, measure their understanding of a design all seem solid and should be included as part any well-rounded usability study.

I also prefer right. For what it’s worth I’m a founder at UsabilityHub and I think it’s a pretty good platform for running these kinds of quick design surveys. Our preference tests are ideal for this use case, you can check out a sample report here which shows you both the winning design and the statistical confidence of the responses given.

Matt one of the co-founders here. While it’s true that currently there is little in the way of features to distinguish Stack from Trello, we are working to address that. We have a number of things we are rolling that will hopefully make Stack a compelling proposition even for die-hard Trello fans. Here’s a short list of some things on the horizon: